Kessil A360N Par

wachee · Nov 6, 2013

Kessil Par Readings - Tell me what you get from these readings.

Okay, this is going to be a little lengthy and maybe a little hard to understand? Thought I would share any how. Kessil A360s have two controllable channels, one for color and the other for intensity. So If I set the color channel to 0% then it is about the color of 30k or more. If I set it to 40% then the color looks about 20k. 100% looks about 10-14k. These are my rough estimates.

The other channel is for intensity, should be self explanatory. However, when the lights are somewhere around 60% or 70% color I find par to be at its peak for the given intensity. Following are readings from a light which is about 6 in above the water, with the sensor just under the water.

I sent an email asking kessil if there were varying intensity based on the color setting, they told me there wasn't. I thought that the par reading would be higher when mixing all the LEDs, sounded logical to me. Their response was that there wouldn't be a difference other than color. These findings show them to be wrong.

The first column is color at 100% the second color at 60% and the third color at 50% and 40%
Color
Intensity100%60%50%40%
100% 700 950 890 800
90% 700 915 790 800
80% 600 810 700 675
70% 600 750 670 615
60% 450 560 500 450
50% 370 470 400 360
40% 300 380 325 275

Notice that the greatest par readings where when color was at 60% and held the highest numbers while at any intensity %.

Next are some readings from 13 inches under the surface while holding the sensor on the same rock. Again using intensities from 100%-40%. First column is color at 50% and the second has color at 100%.

Intensity50%100%
100% 270 250
90% 250 230
80% 230 200
70% 210 195
60% 168 147
50% 135 120
40% 110 100

On the bottom 29 inches, I was getting readings 75-100 par, while having color 100% and intensity 100%. I have the A360N, N stands for narrow spread.

I am curious what you guys conclude from this data. This data shows me that I have to take more into consideration when ramping from sunrise to midday and back to sunset.

One thing I do think is that having these light ramp through the different colors should allow for both coloring up corals and growing them.

Reefing Madness · Nov 6, 2013

:bump2:

TJ's Reef · Nov 6, 2013

OK, here it goes like this PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) is the light spectrum used by plants/symbiotic coral algae to perform Photosynthesis correct..... They use color peaks in the light spectrum measured by nm's ie: 430-470nm 510-550nm and 620-630nm. So depending on the color phase you have it set at there will be a point where it contains the most of these PAR values, which will not be at either end of the spectrum but a balance somewhere in between. This is why the typical 14-16K range will provide the best growth along with what looks best to us as well. They have very efficient LED Grow Lights for (Tomatoes ???) that are roughly a 2-1 ratio of Blue to Red. Great for photosynthesis but make the plants look deathly black to our eyes. Plants do not use the white light as we see it but the peaks of Blues and Reds present within.

Cheers, Todd

enlighten · Oct 7, 2023

wachee said:
Kessil Par Readings - Tell me what you get from these readings.

Okay, this is going to be a little lengthy and maybe a little hard to understand? Thought I would share any how. Kessil A360s have two controllable channels, one for color and the other for intensity. So If I set the color channel to 0% then it is about the color of 30k or more. If I set it to 40% then the color looks about 20k. 100% looks about 10-14k. These are my rough estimates.

The other channel is for intensity, should be self explanatory. However, when the lights are somewhere around 60% or 70% color I find par to be at its peak for the given intensity. Following are readings from a light which is about 6 in above the water, with the sensor just under the water.

I sent an email asking kessil if there were varying intensity based on the color setting, they told me there wasn't. I thought that the par reading would be higher when mixing all the LEDs, sounded logical to me. Their response was that there wouldn't be a difference other than color. These findings show them to be wrong.

The first column is color at 100% the second color at 60% and the third color at 50% and 40%
Color
Intensity100%60%50%40%
100% 700 950 890 800
90% 700 915 790 800
80% 600 810 700 675
70% 600 750 670 615
60% 450 560 500 450
50% 370 470 400 360
40% 300 380 325 275

Notice that the greatest par readings where when color was at 60% and held the highest numbers while at any intensity %.

Next are some readings from 13 inches under the surface while holding the sensor on the same rock. Again using intensities from 100%-40%. First column is color at 50% and the second has color at 100%.

Intensity50%100%
100% 270 250
90% 250 230
80% 230 200
70% 210 195
60% 168 147
50% 135 120
40% 110 100

On the bottom 29 inches, I was getting readings 75-100 par, while having color 100% and intensity 100%. I have the A360N, N stands for narrow spread.

I am curious what you guys conclude from this data. This data shows me that I have to take more into consideration when ramping from sunrise to midday and back to sunset.

One thing I do think is that having these light ramp through the different colors should allow for both coloring up corals and growing them.

Thank you for posting, have been looking for data everywhere on the N version.